I didn’t write this, but I’ve been in almost exactly this meeting at least twenty times.

by Anonymous

Hey, come in, come in. Wherever you like. Nice to finally meet you. I’m a big fan. Big fan. You have trouble parking? I know. This place has like a million ways out and only one way in and it’s impossible to find. Like a maze. I know, I know.

Now are you from around here or…? Oh, yeah? Nope, nope… New York, then Boston, then here. About twelve years. On the West Side. Not too far.

So… what do you know about us? Great… well let me tell you. First of all, we’re not like other producers. We don’t have 80 gazillion things in development. We don’t develop. That’s not what we do. If we decide to do something, then we do it. We make movies. We’re in the movie business, not the development business. Plain and simple.

The old days of buying up everything under the sun, that’s not us. That’s not what we do. We have our own money, so we can hire writers and get things going. Then we bring on a director, or we bring on a piece of cast, or we hire an in-house line producer to say, “Hey, this is how much this is going to cost.” Then we take all of that to the studio and we say, “Here’s the movie. Do you want to make this movie, with this script, with this director, with this cast at this amount of money?” Then we go.

Because they’re not looking for scripts anymore. They’re looking for movies. Amy? Donna? To a lesser extent, Stacey. That’s a whole separate thing because they’re dealing with Steven and who even knows what they’re doing over there anymore. But all of them… they’re looking for movies. They want us to bring them movies. And that’s what we do.

With Bumblebunny, that was a piece of material we found, we hired the writers, we worked on draft after draft, we put the package together and we said, “Here you go. Here’s your summer movie.”

Now what’re you working on? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yep, you don’t have to tell me. Okay, well, let me tell you what we have. Back up for just a second. Let me tell you where we were and where we are.

Do you know of a property called SLAPPY PAPPY? Why would you, right?

Well, it’s based on a best-selling children’s book and was like the number one show in all of Europe for like five years. And no one over here had heard of it. No one. So we bought it and brought it over here and we gave it to Attanasio who did a pass and then we gave it to McQuarrie who did a pass but no one could crack this thing. McQuarrie even said, “I love this, I love this, I love this… but I can’t solve it. Hahhahah. You know?” And that’s Slappy Pappy which I think you would be perfect for.

Oh, right… it’s about a kid who’s about nine-years-old and he smokes and cusses and is really irreverent, you know, because no one gives a shit in Europe, you know? And anyway, he has this old grandpa who’s always trying to hit him — I mean, we say “spank” we don’t say “hit” — but anyway, the kid finds out about these worm-people who are taking over his town and he has to convince his Pappy this is real but everyone thinks the Pappy is crazy, and he’s crazy, and maybe he is, you know? And that’s Slappy Pappy.

Okay, so what I’ll do is I’ll send you the book and I’ll send you this story document we wrote… I won’t send you any of the drafts because they’ll just… that’s NOT what we want to do, you know? And take a look. And if you spark to it, then we can talk some more.

Listen, this is a personal favorite of the studio’s. It’s their kind of movie and they’re looking for a franchise. They’re begging for this.